Satellite Data: 2014 'Not Even Close' to Warmest Year

Although many in the media refer to 2014 as the "hottest" on record based on some surface temperature readings, some satellite datasuggest something else entirely: that 2014 was nowhere near the warmest.

The Daily Caller reported Monday that last year "was not even close to be[ing] the warmest on record" according to data compiled by the two top satellite climate data sets: the Remote Sensing System (RSS) satellite data, which measure the lowest few miles of the earth's atmosphere, and data compiled by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH).

Last year "was third-warmest, but barely," said UAH climate scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy.

The year 2014 "was warm, but not special. The 0.01 degree Celsius difference between 2014 and 2005, or the 0.02 difference with 2013 are not statistically different from zero," Christy said.

Christy said that between 2002 and 2014, temperatures have warmed at a "statistically insignificant" rate of 0.05 degrees Celsius per decade.

RSS and UAH satellite data show there has been no global warming for more than 18 years. This period, which began in October 1996 and lasted for all of 2014, is referred to as "the Great Pause."

"The Great Pause is a growing embarrassment to those who had told us with 'substantial confidence' that the science was settled and the debate over," British climate skeptic Christopher Monckton writes in analyzing the pause in warming. "Nature had other ideas."

Data from the U.S. government's National Climatic Data Center show that in 2014, the continental United States experienced its 34th-warmest year since 1895.

Although many in the media refer to 2014 as the "hottest" on record based on some surface temperature readings, some satellite data suggest something else entirely: that 2014 was nowhere near the warmest.